Another Newbie Question: C or C++

[yo _]

>I would recommend not trying to learn C or C++ by yourself from a book.
>The fastest (and best way) to learn the right stuff is to take coursework 
>from a university or community college.

Not that I like disagreeing for no good reason, but I wholeheartedly 
disagree with that statement.

>If the courses are any good, you'll get feedback, and you'll be paced
>and challenged with projects designed to help you learn.
>
>Going it alone in an unguided environment will only familiarize you
>the lesser aspects of a language, if you last that long. The difficult
>and most important aspects of the language (like pointers, virtual 
>functions, references) will become almost insurmountable trial-and-error 
>obstacles if you try to teach yourself.

If you want to get a lower paying and boring job programming in C/C++ for 
whatever reason and have a piece of paper that says you can have that job, I 
recommend wasting 4-6 months taking a course in your spare time to learn 
C/C++. If you want to be top of your game and learn C/C++ without wasting 
time on topics that take you a minute to understand, get a good book, 
practice the topics you have learned at your own pace, get numorous code 
examples for things you may want to do (sockets, GUI, OpenGL, ncurses, 
threading, kernel interfacing) from the glorious and infinite internet and 
emulate good programming style (using const qualifiers in C++, using 
#defines in C, etc.). Also be prepared to teach yourself because you may not 
always be prepared for a job you may find yourself with; learn how to easily 
learn and use external libraries.

The best programmers will teach themselves. A statement that may be on the 
borderline of opinion to fact by constant example. After all the first 
programmer, in fact, taught herself.
-Rian Hunter

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